Quotes
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
Opening Statement:
“To say we needed that win is probably the understatement of the year. What a resilient group we had. Our guys were a little bit down, felt like we should have finished a little stronger in regulation. But they didn’t stay down. We came out in over time and made winning plays. [Mickey] Mitchell, the play he had at the end of the second half of regulation was a wining play. He threw a couple guys out of the way and went and got it. We did that in the second half. McKinley Wright made some big plays and rebounds. Namon Wright had one. Tyler [Bey] had one. George [King] had one. So,I’m really proud of our guys. We have a young group that’s growing up quick and what a win for the Buffs.”
On This Team’s Age:
“For the most part, our team has shown energy, competitiveness and toughness. Sometimes when you have a young team and they struggle, their heads go down. What they have to understand, and tonight going from regulation to over time is a great example, they were down but they didn’t stay down. We played down to start the game. Sustaining that effort, that competiveness for forty minutes, it’s something the young guys haven’t had to do. You don’t have to do that in youth basketball, in high school, especially when you’re as talented as these guys are. They can cruise, they can take possessions off, they can pout a little bit because they’re not going to come out of the game and they’re talented enough to make up for it. You can’t do that at this level.”
On Player Rotations:
“It’s so early, there’s plenty of time, and you make whole sale substitutions. You get the next five in and see if they can do something. They gave us a little bit of a spark and then you go back to your rotations. It goes back to practice for us. Yesterday’s practice we had two segments where we were playing, the black team and the gold team. Black team was the starters and gold team was the bench. In the scrimmage, the gold team actually beat the black team like a drum and I thought that maybe I’m starting the wrong guys. Then the next competition, the two zone competition, the black team beats the gold team. I stopped it and was like, ‘guys look at what happened the last 25 minutes’ and you think ‘who do you play?’. When you have inconsistencies and guys that play well, it makes it hard to figure it out. At Oregon State, we didn’t figure it out. We came out against Oregon and competed but we didn’t figure it out against Oregon State. We were on the road, not playing well, shots weren’t going in, heads were down and there was no energy and we got rocked by 19.Tonight we didn’t put our heads down so that has to be a learning movement as we go forward. It doesn’t matter if shots are going in or if you’re playing five or 15 minutes, play as hard as you can when you’re in there. That’s what we talked about. Play hard and compete.”
On McKinley Wright’s Leadership Ability:
“McKinley [Wright] is unquestionably our engine. Our guys feed off of him. I’ve been coaching for 30 years and I’ve never had a freshman have the role emotionally the way he does on this team. He commands their respect and they respect him. Usually it’s the seniors that tell the freshmen what to do but he is our engine, emotionally and mentally. Not that the other guys can’t play but he’s got that ‘it factor’ and I’ve said that since he stepped on campus. Archie [Miller] said ‘I’m not sure if you know what you’ve got,’ and he was right.”
On The Role Of The Upperclassmen:
“I’ve really been hard on Dom Collier, George King and Namon Wright, they’re our upperclassmen, two seniors and a junior. I’ve been hard on them because they have not been holding up their end of the bargain in terms of what they’re doing for this team over the last three or four weeks. Tonight they stepped up. Dom Collier stepped up, six assists and one turnover. They made big shots, played aggressively. Namon was aggressive, didn’t turn the ball over one time. He had zero assists and five turnovers on the Oregon trip. Tonight he had zero turnovers. We’ll take that every night from him. George made big threes when he needed to make big threes. Those guys really stepped their game up tonight.”
On Playing Arizona On Saturday:
“It starts on Saturday. Tomorrow is a short turnaround. One thing that helps us in this station is the tournament we went to, the Paradise Jam in Lynchburg, Virginia. New had three games in three days and our guys had that quick turnaround there. We played one game one night and the next night we had to be ready for someone else. We’re built for that. We can turn around this thing quick. But we’re not playing Drake or Mercer. We’re playing Arizona, That’s a little different animal. Still, a game plan is a game plan and we have to put it in and execute it. That presents a whole different challenge because Arizona comes with completely different problems than Arizona State does.
On League Record:
“I said to myself coming to the arena tonight, win or lose, we can’t get too high or too low. If we lost this game and became 0-3, we have to be ready to handle that. Now we’re 1-2 and we have to be ready to handle that. One thing I’ve talked to our young guys about is, if you want to finish in the top half of the league, you have to hold serve at home and you have to at least split on the road. We did not split on the Oregon trip while Utah went 2-0. So, we still have a lot of room for improvement. I’ll say it again, the future of Colorado basketball with these young guys and Evan Batey sitting out, the future is very bright because we have a lot of young talent.”
Colorado Players
McKinley Wright, Fr., G
On pulling out a win despite giving up 80 points
“Defense won this game. We stressed how high scoring they are. The level they score the ball at, we knew we’d have to get stops. 80 points is a little more than we wanted, but coming away with a W is great.”
On his first taste of Coors Event Center during conference play
“It’s crazy, I’ve never played in an atmosphere like this. High school to college is totally different, and having the chance to upset the #4 team in the country and having our fans support us, that’s why we came (to Colorado), that’s what we look forward to.”
On drawing a momentum shifting foul in the backcourt midway through the second half
“That’s the type of energy I bring. We have a lot of guys have a different energy so I try to keep everybody positive and motivated. For us to win, we had to match their energy. Tra Holder came out and hit a two on one three, and you don’t normally see that, normally you’d expect him to try to get a layup. Then it was time to run, we just had to match their energy.”
On not backing down from the fourth ranked team in the country
“Nobody expected us to win this game. Nobody believed in us expected us and our fans. We don’t care what anybody thinks, we’re here to prove people wrong.”
On bringing more energy than the team had on the Oregon trip
“Our energy was shot the whole Oregon State game and in order for us to have fun and win games, you have to have high energy. We just did a great job coming out and matching their energy and that helped us. That’s when we’re at our best, when we’re playing with energy, running, and having fun.“
George King, Sr., G
On the last time he remembers Coors Event Center being as rowdy as it was tonight
“Arizona two years ago when they were ranked #9. It was pretty loud in here today, and that was without the whole student section because obviously it’s Christmas break. It was fun to play in an environment like that.”
On battling back from slow start
“We just kept guarding and trying to make everything tough. Coach put in a little wrinkle defensively a few days ago and I think it rattled them going against something they hadn’t seen before. We kept playing with a lot of energy and a lot of effort, we stuck to the game plan and we never got down on ourselves. We stayed positive the whole game and I that’s why the outcome is what it is.”
On what the huddle was like after giving up the lead heading into overtime
“You can’t hang your head. We’re at home, Coors Event Center is rocking, we have five minutes to play. We wouldn’t want it any other way. We weren’t afraid of that moment. I think that shocked them, they thought we’d roll over and we didn’t. You have to play at a high level in moments like that. Everyone was thinking oh no, overtime against the #4 team in the country, that was our shot. That’s fine, we weren’t thinking that at all.”
On Arizona State cooling off from the three point line
“They’re talented players and talented shooters, they’re going to make shots over hands but if you consistently have a hand there, eventually they’ll miss some, even with the best shooters. Again, just because they came out fast, the hand doesn’t drop. You keep guarding, keep contesting shots, keep making it tough, and that’s what we did.”
On whether he returned to CU for moments like tonight
“I came back to get my degree, obviously, but this was beautiful, I love this. This is one game I’m going to remember for the rest of my life.”
On McKinley and Namon Wright’s maturation this season
“It’s been huge. It’s so much fun playing with these two guys and everyone in this locker room. I love this team.”
On contrasting styles playing against Arizona and Arizona State
“Playing against that small ball style is a lot of fun. Playing against fast guards, you get to run around a bit. One thing that Arizona State does really well is they just come out and hoop, you know what I mean? And that’s a lot of fun to play against. It makes us want to just come out and hoop, get a lot of shots up. But transitioning, [Arizona] is totally different team. We have great big guys coming in on Saturday, so that’s one thing. We’ll make adjustments, we’ll watch film. I’m a versatile player, I can play both styles. Saturday may not be so up and down with so many threes.”
Namon Wright, Jr., G
On gaining confidence in his shot“I’ve just been staying locked in in the gym. I think I had a rough stretch the first five or six games of the season, I left Virginia 0-10 from the three point line. I was driving a lot, I wasn’t hitting threes, but I’m a good shooter. My teammates encouraged me, in practice I hit a majority of my shots in our drills. For me it was just staying locked in and confident. If you go zero or one for whatever in one game, you have to stay with it and stay confident. When Dom [Collier] and I checked into the game, he had the eye of the tiger and was letting it fly and that gave me confidence. That’s exactly what we need.”
On mentality in practice after 0-2 start to Pac-12 play
“We’ve been on a losing streak or whatever you want to call it, so I think we were pretty focused. We knew what we had to do, how we had to approach practice, how we had to stay positive and play together. We just have to bring energy and not be afraid to challenge guys and tell guys to pick up their energy, or to do this or do that. That’s one of the biggest things with us, is to continue challenging each other to be better. I think we did that this last week.”
Arizona State Head Coach Bobby Hurley
Result of losing in overtime:“We didn’t win the tip and then from there we did get a stop but we didn’t get the rebound. Basketball amounts to a lot of things, it’s an entire game but one play that we didn’t make that their freshman point guard made in terms of getting that offensive rebound and that turning into a three-point play was very difficult because we did have great momentum at that point in the game.”
Matchup vs. Colorado:
“I think Colorado got their feet under them in the game. We reverted to going too much one-on-one and not driving it. I’ll take some hits here for not working more against zone in our practices. I don’t think I focused on it enough coming into this game. I know we are far better and more capable of making the three’s, we had a lot of open ones especially in the second half and late in the game. We didn’t connect so that hurt.”
Going against zone:
“I thought we were too stagnant and we didn’t get into gaps enough and kick out. We wanted to try to get the ball to Mickey in the high post. We have a good passing ability. We did do well early with some of the high lows to the ball against the zone but as the game wore on we didn’t do as good of a job.”
Foul on Mickey Mitchell in overtime:
“The last foul on Mickey was a complete joke. It was a three point game and to make that call at that stage of the game was one of the worst things I’ve seen. But that aside, we need Mickey out on the floor as much as possible. He’s a battler and his play at the end of regulation to get us to overtime was huge.”